RULE 61

Work as a team

This isn’t just about you and your partner, although obviously you do need to work as a team. But this is the siblings section of the book, so this Rule is about getting the whole family to work as a team. It’s all part of giving your kids a great relationship with each other.

Working as a team might mean all mucking in together, or it might mean each doing individual jobs that together get the whole thing done. It doesn’t matter which you’re doing, so long as the kids know it’s a team effort.

We have a rule in our house that at the end of a meal, everyone has to help tidy up until the kitchen is clear. Then everyone can stop. The kids are very used to this and they muck in together. One will load the dishwasher while another puts the butter away or puts any leftovers in the compost or the dog’s bowl. Being a shared chore (grown-ups aren’t excused) means that the faster each of them works, the more everyone gains, and they can see this. Often one will say to another, ‘Here, I’ll take that off you while you stack the dishes’, because they can see it’s in their own interests too.

There are lots of chances to exploit this kind of teamwork. You could, of course, get the kids to take turns clearing the kitchen, but you’d be missing an opportunity for them to work as a team.

We learnt another good team exercise from some friends of ours. When they go to the beach for the day, the kids help assemble everything to take with them. One gets the towels, another the surfboards, another sorts out a picnic lunch. They’re all doing separate jobs, but they’re aware that they’re all pulling in the same direction, i.e. getting to the beach as soon as possible.

Crises are the best opportunities of all for team building, and the more fun you can make it, the better. When I was young, we had a drain that used to flood about once every year or two when there was heavy rain, and it threatened to engulf the garage (where we kept various things that mustn’t get wet, like the freezer). As soon as we realized it was happening, we all used to pile out in the rain, often in pyjamas with coats and wellies over the top, with brooms to sweep the water away from the garage, while someone cleared all the dead leaves out of the drain. We all worked together for about half an hour getting it clear, usually having a good laugh as we did it, and then collapsed back indoors to hot chocolate and, although we were far too unsentimental to admit it, actually a rather good sense of team spirit.